v0.6.1

Closing the window, cleanly, on NVIDIA 🐧

v0.6.1 is a quick fix for the Linux desktop app on NVIDIA graphics cards. In 0.6.0, closing the Blitz window could crash the part of the app that draws the page, and your desktop's crash reporter (DrKonqi on KDE, Apport on Ubuntu) popped up about every other time you quit. Your work was never at risk, because the crash came after the window had already closed. Now Blitz closes cleanly every time.

Who should update: anyone using the Linux desktop app with an NVIDIA card. Nothing changes on macOS, on other Linux graphics cards, or in the command-line tools, so updating there is optional.

See it in a minute:

1. Install the .deb or the Arch Linux package from the release, and start Blitz.
2. Close the window, then start Blitz again. Do this a few times.
3. No crash reports appear, and coredumpctl list shows no new WebKitWebProcess entries.

What's fixed

• Quitting never crashes on NVIDIA. When you close the window, Blitz now shuts down the web page's process first, before the graphics driver can trip over it on the way out.
• Unsaved changes still come first. If the editor has unsaved changes, Blitz asks before closing, just as before. Cancel, and nothing closes.
• The graphics card stays on. You don't need to turn off Use the graphics card to avoid the crash.

Good to know

• Your settings and workspaces carry over: install the update over 0.6.0.
• Nothing you type is lost. The page doesn't save anything as it closes, so ending its process early loses nothing.
• Tested on an NVIDIA RTX 4090 (driver 580) with KDE on Wayland: 0.6.0 crashed on 3 of 5 closes, 0.6.1 on none of 14.

Desktop app

• Linux: blitz-desktop_*.deb (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13 and later) or blitz-desktop-*.pkg.tar.zst (Arch Linux), for x86-64 and Arm. Install it over 0.6.0.
• macOS: Blitz_*_macos_universal.dmg (notarized when the release was signed). Unchanged from 0.6.0 apart from the version.

macOS

The macOS CLI binaries aren't notarized by Apple. If you download one in a browser, Gatekeeper refuses to run it until you clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine blitz blitzd

You can also open it once through Finder's context menu (Open). A copy downloaded with curl isn't quarantined.

What's Changed

• Linux: closing the window ends the web process before it can crash by @rmcguinness in #52

Full Changelog: v0.6.0...v0.6.1

Verifying

checksums.txt lists every archive; its signature is checksums.txt.sigstore.json. Each desktop package has its own .sigstore.json. Verify against this repository's release workflow:

cosign verify-blob --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/retail-cortex/blitz/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com checksums.txt
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt

To check the fix on Linux with an NVIDIA card: with Use the graphics card on, close the window a few times, then run coredumpctl list. It should show no new WebKitWebProcess entries.